Facing the Future: Celebrating On The Way To Golgotha

Dr. James Mayfield
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

PALM SUNDAY
April 9, 2006

  Text: Mark 11:7-10, Luke 19:39-40a, & Romans 5:6-8

In facing the future, how are we to deal with change? We tend to resist change. In this our human behavior mimics the physics of Newton 's laws of motion. If we are not moving, we resist being made to move. If we are moving, we resist changing direction and fight against being brought to a halt.

We resist change even when our behavior is causing problems and pain for ourselves and others. What is familiar, even if it is painful, is what feels “normal” to us; change feels strange, unnatural -- even when that change would improve our lives and the lives of others. For example, families that become accustomed to dealing with a member of the family who is an active alcoholic, have a tendency to unwittingly sabotage the alcoholic's efforts to move toward sober living by failing to change their behavior and continuing to relate to that person as if she or he is still a drunk. We resist change, even change that would be helpful to others and better for ourselves.

But Jesus Christ calls us to change, to conversion, to transformation, to such a change in our living we talk about it as being born again, becoming a new creature, a new creation. New life is what Christ offers and new life, a change in the way we live, is what we tend to resist.

This is true of us and it was true of people 2000 years ago. Oh, we want change, just the way the people back then wanted change. But the change we want is for the world around us to change so that it is the way we want it to be. We want change but it is others we want to do all the changing -- not us. And when it appears that may happen, we are ready to celebrate.

The people in that first Palm Sunday crowd were celebrating because they wanted to believe the coming of the messiah was going to make life be they way they wanted life to be -- with their problems solved, their pain removed, and no foreigners telling them what to do. Of course they were mistaken. And when they realized the change Jesus was bringing called for them to change, they were upset -- just as we tend to be upset when we discover change is expected of us.

We do not like it when the claims of Christ tell us to make changes in our living -- such as changing what we do with our money or what we do with our time and abilities. The Jesus most of us want to worship is one who will make us healthy, wealthy and happy -- not the one who tells us to pick up our cross and follow in his footsteps to some sort of Golgotha .

The people in Jerusalem who had the most in common with us -- well educated, affluent, somewhat influential in the community -- these people in Jerusalem saw Jesus as a threat. The Romans also saw him as a troublesome rabble rouser that it would be well be to be rid of. So, the celebration the first Palm Sunday became the prelude to Jesus' crucifixion.

The hope and joyful expectation that energized the first Palm Sunday crowd to shout “Hosanna!” was misplaced hope, and expectation of the impossible. By Friday, their misplaced hope was shredded and replaced by profound disappointment and even despair and anger. The Palm Sunday joy melted like snow into tears of sorrow -- not just for Jesus but sorrow that the changes they wanted were not coming. By Friday, the people would have said their Palm Sunday celebration was a mistake.

But Jesus would not have agreed. Remember the part of the Palm Sunday story that Luke tells, in which some of the religious leaders in Jerusalem told Jesus to tell his disciples to stop celebrating and shouting? Jesus answered them saying: “If these people were silent, the very stones would cry out.” There was something to celebrate that Palm Sunday, something profound was happening -- something that was earth shaking, life shaping, history shaping.

It was the incarnation of God, the incarnation of the grace out of which the world came into being and by which the world is sustained, it was this incarnation of the grace of God coming among us as one of us. It was not God coming among us to solve our problems the way we want or to make life be as we desire. It was God coming among us as one of us to reveal what God is like and what God expects. The one on that donkey was the incarnation of healing, redeeming, transforming love coming among us, as one of us showing us who we are to be as human beings. It was the incarnation of grace riding into our Jerusalem with the clear purpose of converting us, transforming us, redeeming us, changing us from the way we are to the way God intends us to be. This peasant from the country riding on a donkey, was the Word made flesh and entering where we live like a king on a mission --a mission to bring wholeness to our lives and to the world. What was worthy of celebration the first Palm Sunday is that God's grace was coming among us on a mission of “shalom,” a mission of profound peace.

This mission was to bring to the world the kind of forgiveness that makes the transformation of lives and the transformation of the world possible. Let me say that again. The mission of this messiah on a donkey was to bring to the world the kind of forgiveness that makes the transformation of lives and the transformation of the world possible.

I will try to explain. God gave us freedom so we would capable of loving one another and loving God. But in our freedom each generation of humans has made other choices and in making other choices has made a mess of life. Our rejection of life as God intends not only hurts us, the consequences of our choices hurts others, and influences them to hurt others. Generation after generation the bill of sin increases and compounds the burden like an unpaid high interest loan.

In this mess we humans have made we substitute pleasure for purpose, we try to ease our inner pain, our sense of inadequacy with the narcotic of accumulating things and obtaining power over others. But in our pursuit of pleasure, power and wealth, we are easily seduced by the temptation to allow the end to justify the means. Hungry for pleasure, longing for our lives to matter,, wanting for our living to make a difference, we succumb to using other people, taking advantage of them, running over them, ignoring their needs and exploiting their weaknesses. The end result is angers, resentments and the longing of others to get even with us which sets in motion an on-going, destructive cycle of revenge begetting revenge -- revenge in the name of getting even, a perverted form of justice. And when we do not take out our frustration and sense of failure on others, we take it out on ourselves in one way or another.

Only the most profound and far reaching forgiveness can make it possible for the revenge cycle to end, and for us to accept ourselves and be peace with ourselves and with others. Christ came to make new life a possibility for each person and for the whole world. This mission is what resulted in Christ going to the cross, where he was tortured to death. In the passage we read from Romans, Paul wrote: “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners, Christ died for us.” This cruel, unjust execution of Jesus turned out to be God's strange and powerful way of God taking on Himself the burden of the world's sin so that it would be possible for the world to experience forgiveness -- the kind of forgiveness that makes healing and the transformation of lives possible and in that makes it possible for the world to change from the way it is, to the way God intends it to be.

The incarnation of the redeeming, healing, transforming, forgiving love of God came among us as one of us, willing to take on our worst, and even die in offering us new life, changed life. In this God in Christ set us free from bondage to sin. And this freedom from bondage to sin in its various forms makes it possible for us to change, to repent, to be transformed, to be born again.

In a way profoundly strange, this is what the authentic celebration of Palm Sunday is all about. Palm Sunday is the celebration of the arrival of divine love that is so amazing and profound it is willing even to endure the worst we can do, in order to offer us the kind of forgiveness, that makes new life, redeemed life, a real possibility.

Palm Sunday is the prelude to hope, even though the nature of that hope is often misunderstood. The authentic celebration of Palm Sunday was and is the hope of our transformation and the hope of life being lived as God intends life to be lived. So, even though most, if not all, of those who first shouted “Hosanna” were celebrating the wrong thing, there really was something of eternal significance worth celebrating that day.

So, how shall we face the future? As persons embracing the legacy of the cross of Christ and therefore as people who can embrace change -- the change God's grace makes possible. God, as we move through this week that is so special we call it holy, make us so aware of the extent and depth of your love that we are changed from the living as we do to living as you intend. Amen.

Pastoral prayer:
God, for springtime and children, we are thankful. For the happy times and creative times, for all that causes us to smile and makes us want to sing, for memories that nourish us, for examples that inspire us, for opportunities that bring out the best in us, for all the ways You enrich our lives, we are grateful. Today we are especially aware of our gratitude for the birth of Kendall Grace born to Leslie & Chris Cedar, the birth Thomas Grant born to Megan & Michael Helbrecht, and for Scarlet Elizabeth born to Jana & Brad McKelvey. And we are thankful for the gift of faith in the midst of bad times. We are grateful for the amazing ways Your love comes to us through people and memories and insights and dreams enabling us to face what must be faced and empowering us to move on. We pray that those who go in harms way on our behalf will draw upon the resources of grace you provide, and we pray that the leaders all around this planet will be instruments of your will. God as we enter this Holy week, we remember that just as Jesus was abandoned and betrayed long ago, we also have all too often drifted away from You and abandoned Your will. Forgive us and enable us to live in faithfulness and obedience, drawing upon the resources Your redeeming grace provides so that we will live as Jesus was teaching us to live when he taught us to pray: "Our Father ...."